Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

After World War I, global relations worsened. With Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, Germany set on an aggressive path of building a “racially pure” superstate; the Nazis claimed to be righting the wrongs of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, which disproportionately punished Germany after World War I. Meanwhile, Japan’s empire, underpinned by militaristic ideology, was growing. Japan annexed Korea in 1910. Expanding into China in 1931 and Southeast Asia during World War II meant access to resources that Japan lacked for its growing population. After Germany and Japan violated the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact and pulled out of the League of Nations in the early 1930s, the United States remained formally neutral but offered aid to the Allies in Europe. However, since the US disagreed with Japan’s China policy, it put in place an oil embargo that severely impacted Japan, which received most of its oil from the United States. Japan’s response to the embargo was initiating the air strikes on Pearl Harbor.

As the US entered the war, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which created exclusion zones on the Pacific coast and forced Japanese Americans, including American citizens, to relocate to concentration camps, losing their homes and livelihoods. The Order created two types of concentration camps: so-called “assembly centers” for temporary housing, and more permanent war relocation centers. Japanese American concentration camps included Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Amanche (Granada) in Colorado, Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas, Topaz in Utah, as well as Minidoka in Idaho. Others, like Fort Missoula, functioned as “alien detention centers” (501) housing only non-citizens from Japan, Italy, and Germany. Despite being at war with Germany and Italy, the United States imprisoned far fewer people of German and Italian extraction than Japanese Americans, making the policy have clear racial undertones.

The camps were often located in inhospitable climates and inaccessible areas. They were surrounded by barbed wire and used armed guards. Japanese Americans lived in barracks with few necessities, relying on antiquated coal-burning stoves and self-made furniture. Interned second-generation Japanese Americans, or Nisei, were allowed to work, and children attended schools. However, there were few opportunities for first-generation Japanese residents. After the Roosevelt administration allowed second-generation Japanese Americans to enlist in 1943, many volunteered to escape imprisonment and prove their loyalty to the United States.

Like the United States, Canada established its own concentration camps for Japanese Canadians during World War II. At that time, many Japanese Canadians lived on the Pacific coast of Canada in British Columbia. Canada forcibly relocated approximately 22,000 Japanese Canadians to camps. Their property and land were appropriated by the government and auctioned off. Some Japanese Canadians were deported to Japan, including approximately 4,000 Nisei who had never been to Japan.

In Canada, Japanese Canadians only received the right to vote in 1949. The United States removed racial restrictions from naturalization for first-generation Japanese Americans in 1952. It was not until 1988 that the Ronald Reagan administration officially apologized for their treatment during World War II via the Civil Liberties Act.